June 9, 1999

You're Okay, I'm Running For Senate

Are you beginning to feel sorry yet for Al Gore? Readers of this column -- especially last week's installment -- know I am no fan of Bill Clinton's number-one cheerleader. (Gore stands by his man more than Hillary Clinton does.) But even though Gore has pressured South Africa to tear up a law that would make anti-AIDS drugs more affordable for its millions of HIV-infected citizens, has wimped out on global warming, and has been a lieutenant in the scandalous fundraising of the Democratic Party, I almost feel a tinge of sympathy for the lug. After all, he's caught in the middle of the Bill and Hillary Clinton psychodrama.

Hillary's Senate bid continues the national soap opera. For the media, not much could be better. The cheated-upon wife of the President turns to a Senate race for therapy. Bill's adultery was a good career move for Hillary. Before Monicagate, when Hillary was largely known for her cockamamie health care plan and for being a hard-ass in dealing with requests for information on the various Clinton scandals, there was not much yearning for her to parachute into New York and slide into the Senate seat being vacated by Daniel Patrick Moynihan. She's improved her public standing by being victimized by the lying philanderer she enabled. Will the wronged woman find salvation in the loving arms of the New York electorate? What a great story line. With Juanita Broaddrick and all the other Jane Does back in obscurity and the Kosovo war nearing an end, Hillary is stepping up to the plate just in the nick of time for the cable blabfests. "Thank God for this," Hillary biographer and one-time right wing investigative journalist David Brock says, half-seriously. "Now we'll still have something to talk about." Instead of worrying about the best way to solve the problems of Medicare or figuring out what the hell is a Social Security lock-box. With Hillary on the run, the show goes on.

What should be the appropriate end to the Clinton tale seems obvious. Bill is left standing, free to dart off to Dreamworks, run a university, or do commercial endorsements -- and everyone close to him is in tatters, with Gore defeated (if he's lucky enough to best Bill Bradley for the nomination) and Hillary spurned by her substitute family. Mind you, this is not a prediction. But such a finale for the Clinton era would contain a certain poetry. That is why I would have counseled Hillary to resist the siren call of electoral acceptance. Losing could be devastating: she pays the final tab. But Hillary is a grown-up and if she thinks she can live with that climax, so be it. More importantly, I'd wish she'd give up her New York state of mind so that the Clinton melodrama would fizzle out. But she is not doing us the favor.

As pollster John Zogby pointed out in a New York Times Op-Ed last week, the numbers are not necessarily in her favor. Hillary would be in a better position if the election was this November. For a year-and-a-half, she will be poked, probed and picked at by opponents, pundits, and reporters. She might not look so good when Monica is a distant memory. Will Hillary wear well? Last week, when she appeared at a high school graduation at a Washington-area school, the master of ceremony kidded that since she was looking for work outside the White House she might consider the school superintendent position open in that district. Hillary tried to smile along with the joke, but her tight-lipped expression seemed to say, "what a fucking idiot." If she can't take this sort of mindless ribbing, she will be in trouble on the campaign trail. And let's see her explain once more that smells-bad commodities deal. Can she do so without adopting that how-dare-you-question-me attitude that appears whenever her probity is challenged?

Hillarymania is a bad development for politics. She's a credible candidate because she possesses fame and can raise money. What are her true accomplishments? Guiding the career of a politician who turned on his party whenever that helped him, holding the hand of a man who dumped their friend Lani Guinier, who engaged in sleazy fundraising, who has done little for inner cities, who beat back labor on NAFTA and GATT, who cozied up to the Chinese, and who signed the GOP's version of welfare reform. On her own, she set back the cause of universal health care coverage for years. And she played a crucial role in bringing Dick Morris, the mercenary consultant who epitomizes cynical poll-driven politics, into the White House after the Republican victory in the congressional elections of 1994. (She deserves every barb he tosses at her.) But she is a brand name, the latest of celebrity politicians. Because the Democratic Party does not have much of team to field in New York, it has to import a ringer. At least, it didn't turn to a wrestler.

There's been much "punditfying" about the impact of Hillary race on Gore's campaign. Outside of Gore spinners, there appears to be no one who sees how this can redound to Gore's advantage. Hillary will be a distraction, a magnet (if not a black hole) for money and media attention. Gore's chief challenge is stepping out of the shadow (or mudpit) created by Bill Clinton. Just as he starts that endeavor, he has to worry about Hillary blocking out the light. She will be an ever-present point of comparison for Gore. He will be constantly asked to comment on developments within her campaign. ("Mr. Vice President, do you agree with Hillary Clinton that all federal and state contractors should pay a living wage, which is higher than the minimum wage?") Her message (whatever it will be) will compete with his message (whatever it will be).

Hillary is not being loyal to her husband's chief loyalist. Either she believes her campaign somehow can help Gore -- or that it cannot. Neither scenario is flattering. In the first, she is delusional. (If Gore cannot win New York on his own in the general election, then he has no business being in the race.) In the second, she doesn't care about her good friend.

Gore, who has plenty of problems of his own, is caught in the crossfire of the First Couple's dysfunction. Last week, the Vice President brought a bunch of religion writers to the White House, Before the group, he proclaimed, "The purpose of life is to glorify God. I turn to my faith as the bedrock of my approach to any important question in my life." (One can hear Gore: "Dear Lord, please guide me as I decide how best to handle RIFing GS-14s in the next RIGO initiative.") The next day, at a "Women for Gore" event at Washington's swank Mayflower Hotel -- Hillary was there; Bill was obviously absent -- he opened his speech by referring to his mother and noting that she was a major inspiration in his life. (That truly differentiates him from other presidential contenders.) The Gore campaign strategy is congealing: God and mother.

If I were Gore these days, I'd want my Mommy, and I'd be praying.

A Smoking Bush?

George W. Bush owes Clinton big. How many times have you heard a Clintonphobe brand the President a dope-smoking this or that? (As in "dope-smoking, draft-dodging, liar.") All those GOPers and conservatives who once were incensed that Clinton toked now don't seem to give a hoot whether Bush the Younger lit up, did lines, or popped. Allowing W. to skip out on the did-you-do-drugs question, the party has embraced him as the prodigal son. Let's call this progress, a sign that uptight Republicans have eased up on their obsession with drugs. Still, has Bush really dodged the Big-D bullet? He's tried to grant himself blanket immunity, saying he had his wild days but that when he turned 40, he cast off the cigs and booze, went born-again. Drugs, though, are not part of his self-confession. When queried on the subject, he does a Texas two-step. Diane Sawyer last month asked Gov. Bush why he won't address the matter, and he replied, "Because there's a Washington game that tries to get people like me to chase every rumor. See, the game is to try to destroy somebody's reputation and what I am going to tell people is that 20 to 30 years ago I made mistakes, but what people need to know about me is that I've learned from my mistakes. And there needs to be a consistent message from people in my generation that says to kids, drugs will destroy your life, abusing alcohol will destroy your life."

It's only out of concern for the kids that he won't play this "Washington game." How considerate. But, for merely argument's sake, assume Bush was a fierce cokehead during the high-flying oil-boom days of the 1980s, then he learned to say no, and -- what do you know -- becomes President of the United States. That's a great story. It's inspirational. It tells children that even if you stray into the dark corners of recreational drug use you still can grow up, shake the habit, and be President. That's much more believable than the lie that all drug use is evil, wrong, and destined to ruin your life.

Bush could deliver a real-life message regarding drugs, but he's being too coy. Shortly before he told Sawyer he wouldn't participate in the game of drug-use gotcha, he said to USA Today, "I'm not ready for rumors and gossip. I'm ready for the truth. Surely people will learn the truth." If Bush wants the truth to beat out rumor, that can be achieved easily. All he has to do is spill it. If he wants the public to know the truth about his drug use -- and not the rumors (and there is plenty of delicious but unconfirmed chit-chat on this front) -- he can arrange that. "Hello, my name is George and before I found God...."

After this nation was subjected to too many details about Clinton's private amusements, it would be natural if many Americans are disinterested in W.'s past personal behavior. But Bush has not shied away from making the personal behavior of others a political issue. A year ago when he spoke before conservatives in Los Angeles, he noted that 30 percent of all births in Texas were in single-mother families, and he called these families "fatherless, jobless and Godless." Godless? Who's playing judge here? Was he saying that out-of-wedlock children are damned? Must one be married to live within the loving embrace of God? In the same speech, Bush said, "We are living in a time of moral indifference. I advocate abstaining from sex until you find your right life partner." Now that he's married, he wants there to be no sex among the unmarried. If he wants to be elected national preacher, it's fair to wonder how his past walking holds up to his current talking.

Barr Bewitched

When rightwing Republican Congressman Bob Barr was leading the impeachment charge against the President, Clinton defenders blasted the effort as a sexual witch-hunt. The charge was overstated. Louse-hunt would have been more accurate, for true witch-hunts target the innocent. Having failed in his pursuit of Clinton, Barr -- the biggest yahoo of the House impeachment managers -- is now occupying himself with a literal witch-hunt. At a recent town meeting in his Georgia district, Barr lashed out at the commander of Fort Hood for permitting a Wiccan ceremony at the Texas military base. Wicca is a nature-oriented pagan religion that is sometimes referred to as witchcraft (think good witch, not bad witch). The Fort Hood event marked the vernal equinox and drew several dozen male and female witches. It's not clear how Barr came to be worrying about extra-curricular events at a military base thousands of miles from his district. But, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, at the meeting with his constituents, he argued that the practice of Wicca erodes military discipline, but Judaism, Christianity, and Islam does not. "Are you afraid of witches?" Amber Maeve Szmanski, a high priestess in the Grove of the Winged Sacrab, asked Barr at the town meeting. "Our Founding Fathers had more intelligence than to try to establish a state religion....If you remove the Wiccan, who will be next on your list?"

How reassuring it is to see that Barr's nuttiness wasn't adversely affected by his defeat on impeachment. Next he can chase after Druids in the State Department.